


A Barrel Full of Keys

by Oroburos69



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Problem Solving Luffy Style, gen - Freeform, nonnie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 08:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/795843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oroburos69/pseuds/Oroburos69
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A re-match with Crocodile goes south, and Luffy must deal with a mysterious sea-stone cage!</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Barrel Full of Keys

“You aren’t going to get out of this, Strawhat,” Crocodile promised, and he disappeared into a cloud of sand, flying up the stairs and out into the corridor faster than Luffy could run.

Luffy didn’t chase after him, even though he really, really wanted to. He could take Crocodile down easy, but he’d forgotten, in that confidence, that Crocodile was _tricky_. Luffy knew that Crocodile was trying to delay him so he could get to the dungeon first, and Luffy definitely had to get there before Crocodile did, but he couldn’t leave Robin and Chopper behind.

He glanced around the rotting room, looking for inspiration, but there was nothing but his crewmates stuck in a cage and the giant glass globe of sand that was slowly emptying itself onto the floor. The windows looked out on the ocean, and something with big eyes and bigger teeth swam by, barely visible in the light of the chandelier.

Something creaked softly, and Luffy hope it wasn’t the windows. He had until the sand ran out before the windows would open, but the only reason he knew that was because Crocodile had told him so, and Vivi had said that Crocodile was a no-good liar, so Luffy wasn’t even sure that he knew that for sure.

The key to the seastone cage that Robin and Chopper were in was somewhere in the barrel, but the barrel was filled with keys in every shape and size. Luffy didn’t know what the key was supposed to look like, he just knew that it was in the barrel. Maybe. If Crocodile had been telling the truth.

He bit his lip, trying to figure out if he could just keep going and let his nakama get out themselves, but Robin wasn’t breathing very good inside the cage, and Chopper was stuck as a reindeer--he couldn’t help. The rest of his crew were somewhere else, separated in the fighting. There was no way Luffy could leave them.

Luffy frowned, suddenly nervous. He wasn’t any good at this kind of thing. Nami would figure it out in a heartbeat, and if Robin was awake she’d be out already. As a matter of fact, the only one of his nakama who Luffy wasn’t sure could figure it out was Zoro, and Zoro could just chop through the seastone cage, so he’d _still_ be better than Luffy.

Luffy shoved his hands into the barrel, searching through the keys. There were big keys, little keys, silver keys, and copper keys, and they all looked different. None of them looked anything like the massive seastone lock on the outside of the cage, but Crocodile was so sneaky that he’d probably made the key look nothing like the lock on purpose. A black key with a silver mirror on the end caught Luffy’s eye, so he grabbed and shoved it into the lock, stretching his arm so he could keep going through the keys.

He wasn’t looking when he shoved it in and twisted, so he only felt the softness in the key, the bend and snap of it between his fingers. Luffy tossed the end of the key away and tried to slide his fingers into the keyhole to retrieve the rest, but the lock had pieces of seastone inside. He tugged on the end, but the key was lodged into the lock, and Luffy couldn’t get a grip on it.

Damnit. He tried again to pull it out, and failed. Chopper bleated at him anxiously from behind the bars, and Luffy grinned and waved. Robin wasn’t moving, just the tips of her fingers visible through the bars.

Luffy frowned as soon as Chopper returned to Robin, and abandoned the barrel of keys, heading toward the glass ball. He couldn’t see a single thing that he could punch to open the cage, and the sand in the hourglass was falling even faster now...

There was something weird about the hourglass opening the windows. Luffy glanced at the collection of ropes and pulleys attached to the ceiling, his eyes narrowing. Crocodile had said that the sand running out would start the windows opening, but how were the windows supposed to know that? They didn’t have eyes.

The sand-filled glass bulb was hanging off a hook, and the hook was connected to a rope that disappeared into the rotting ceiling.

There were a ton of ropes, falling in loops and knots from the ceiling like really messy rigging, but they didn’t connect to anything. Ceilings didn’t have sails, so why were there ropes?

The old hotel had been fancy once, and Nami would probably have liked the gilt and fancy flower statues that were still stuck to parts of the ceiling. Luffy punched his hand through it, hooked his fingers around the boards, and yanked down the plaster in a shower of dust and splinters.

The space behind the ceiling was filled with taut ropes, and now that he could see them, it was clear that the creaking noise Luffy had heard was from them. The rope attached to the hourglass was strung above the others, and Luffy had to stretch his neck until he could peer at it from above to figure out how it was supposed to tell the windows what to do.

The hourglass rope was holding down a plate of metal that had a spring stuck under it, stuck in the space between two of the rafters. Luffy tilted his head and brought his hands up to investigate. It looked like one of Usopp’s toys, or maybe part of Franky. Luffy poked at it, but the plate didn’t do anything. The backs of his fingers brushed against something that didn’t feel like wood as he pulled away, and Luffy froze.

He twisted until he could see the rafter over the metal plate, and grinned triumphantly. One of Usopp’s impact dials was stuck under it! Luffy pried the dial out from the nest of wires holding it in place, and then tucked the dial in his pocket. Usopp would be glad to have it back.

The hiss of falling sand stopped, and Luffy glanced back, just in time to see the empty globe crash to the floor. The hourglass rope jerked, suddenly slack, and the metal plate it’d been holding down sprang up, hitting the wire-wrapped rafter over it with a tinny thud.

Luffy reached out for the ropes holding the cage up, intended to drag the cage up the stairs and out of the flood of salt water--

Nothing happened. The windows stayed firmly in place, strange-looking creatures hovering outside them hopefully (Luffy was definitely going fishing after he kicked Crocodile’s ass. That thing with the tentacles looked delicious).

Luffy laughed and shook his head, slowly sinking back into his natural shape. Crocodile sure screwed that one up! And now that Luffy had the impact dial, he had a _really_ good idea for getting Robin and Chopper out of that cage!


End file.
